We made it to Canada and didn’t get arrested. We are supposed to contact “Arrive Canada” before getting off our boat at the nearest port. Well that didn’t work because the IT outage prevented us from having our phones switched to international roaming buy the carrier. So we arrived in Trenton which by the way the sign with the map (see picture) says it’s the City of Quinte West. Everything and everybody else calls it Trenton. The City Marina is first class all the way and run by what looks like a bunch of high school kids. Of course everybody looks real young to us. Maybe they’re in their 30s but the cold Canadian air somehow preserves their bodies. Who knows. But I digress. So I docked (with help from two giggling high schoolers) and ran into the office to beg them to let me use their phone to call the authorities. After a 15 wait on hold, an nice but official sounding lady came on, asked me a few questions (basically — what the heck are you doing here and what re you bringing into our country?) and four minutes later I had my official arrival number to display on the windshield of our boat. Nothing about jail, deportation or which old guy are you voting for.
So now for the fun stuff. They apparently knew were coming in Friday afternoon because unlike the other city that only had the high school marching band giving us a wonderful program of music, this great city had a drone light show that was absolutely spectacular and followed immediately by 45 minutes of fireworks. It was right at the marina so we had the best seats in the house/marina. We told them this morning we would stay another day (free laundromat) so tonight they had a lady musician singing all sorts of songs while they served $5 drinks (cheaper after the currency conversion). Tomorrow we enter the famous Trent/Severn Waterway with the 45 locks and winding narrow passages. We will have limited — and expensive — access to cell phones and internet so will probably not blog for a while.
Oh, they also had an art/craft market Saturday that took up 3 blocks downtown
Drones
They had the space shuttle maneuver in the air and simulate a landing with landing gear coming down
I forgot to mention that we had to negotiate some rough water from the rapids that emptied into the Erie Canal right at the exit of two locks. That slowed us down enough that lock 5 closed for the day before we could get there. So we stayed at the entrance to Lock 3 (there is no lock 4). You can see the spray from the water fall over the dam on the other side of our boat.
We climbed the multiple flights of stairs to a restaurant overlooking the dam. This was taken through the window.